Pauline Baynes - The Horse and His Boy

Shasta soon learned, when he heard Bree talking like that, to prepare for a gallop.

After they had travelled on for weeks and weeks, past more bays and headlands and rivers and villages than Shasta could remember, there came a moonlit night when they started their journey at evening, having slept during the day. They had left the downs behind them and were crossing a wide plain with a forest about half a mile away on their left. The sea, hidden by low sandhills, was about the same distance on their right. They had jogged along for about an hour, sometimes trotting and sometimes walking, when Bree suddenly stopped.

“What’s up?” said Shasta.

“S-s-ssh!” said Bree, craning his neck round and twitching his ears. “Did you hear something? Listen.”

“It sounds like another horse – between us and the wood,” said Shasta after he had listened for about a minute.

“It is another horse,” said Bree. “And that’s what I don’t like.”

“Isn’t it probably just a farmer riding home late?” said Shasta with a yawn.

“Don’t tell me!” said Bree. “That’s not a farmer’s riding. Nor a farmer’s horse either. Can’t you tell by the sound? That’s quality, that horse is. And it’s being ridden by a real horseman. I tell you what it is, Shasta. There’s a Tarkaan under the edge of that wood. Not on his war horse – it’s too light for that. On a fine blood mare, I should say.”

“Well, it’s stopped now, whatever it is,” said Shasta.

“You’re right,” said Bree. “And why should he stop just when we do? Shasta, my boy, I do believe there’s someone shadowing us at last.”

“What shall we do?” said Shasta in a lower whisper than before. “Do you think he can see us as well as hear us?”

“Not in this light so long as we stay quite still,” answered Bree. “But look! There’s a cloud coming up. I’ll wait till that gets over the moon. Then we’ll get off to our right as quietly as we can, down to the shore. We can hide among the sandhills if the worst comes to the worst.”

They waited till the cloud covered the moon and then, first at a walking pace and afterwards at a gentle trot, made for the shore.

The cloud was bigger and thicker than it had looked at first and soon the night grew very dark. Just as Shasta was saying to himself, “We must be nearly at those sandhills by now,” his heart leaped into his mouth because an appalling noise had suddenly risen up out of the darkness ahead; a long snarling roar, melancholy and utterly savage. Instantly Bree swerved round and began galloping inland again as fast as he could gallop.

“What is it?” gasped Shasta.

“Lions!” said Bree, without checking his pace or turning his head.

After that there was nothing but sheer galloping for some time. At last they splashed across a wide, shallow stream and Bree came to a stop on the far side. Shasta noticed that he was trembling and sweating all over.

“That water may have thrown the brute off our scent,” panted Bree when he had partly got his breath again. “We can walk for a bit now.”

As they walked Bree said, “Shasta, I’m ashamed of myself. I’m just as frightened as a common, dumb Calormene horse. I am really. I don’t feel like a Talking Horse at all. I don’t mind swords and lances and arrows but I can’t bear – those creatures. I think I’ll trot for a bit.”

About a minute later, however, he broke into a gallop again, and no wonder. For the roar broke out again, this time on their left from the direction of the forest.

“Two of them,” moaned Bree.

When they had galloped for several minutes without any further noise from the lions Shasta said, “I say! That other horse is galloping beside us now. Only a stone’s throw away.”

“All the b-better,” panted Bree. “Tarkaan on it – will have a sword – protect us all.”

“But, Bree!” said Shasta. “We might just as well be killed by lions as caught. Or I might. They’ll hang me for horse-stealing.” He was feeling less frightened of lions than Bree because he had never met a lion; Bree had.

Bree only snorted in answer but he did sheer away to his right. Oddly enough the other horse seemed also to be sheering away to the left, so that in a few seconds the space between them had widened a good deal. But as soon as it did so there came two more lions’ roars, immediately after one another, one on the right and the other on the left, and the horses began drawing nearer together. So, apparently, did the lions. The roaring of the brutes on each side was horribly close and they seemed to be keeping up with the galloping horses quite easily. Then the cloud rolled away. The moonlight, astonishingly bright, showed up everything almost as if it were broad day. The two horses and two riders were galloping almost neck to neck and knee to knee just as if they were in a race. Indeed Bree said (afterwards) that a finer race had never been seen in Calormen.

Shasta now gave himself up for lost and began to wonder whether lions killed you quickly or played with you as a cat plays with a mouse and how much it would hurt. At the same time (one sometimes does this at the most frightful moments) he noticed everything. He saw that the other rider was a very small, slender person, mail-clad (the moon shone on the mail) and riding magnificently. He had no beard.

Something flat and shining was spread out before them. Before Shasta had time even to guess what it was there was a great splash and he found his mouth half full of salt water. The shining thing had been a long inlet of the sea. Both horses were swimming and the water was up to Shasta’s knees. There was an angry roaring behind them and, looking back, Shasta saw a great, shaggy and terrible shape crouched on the water’s edge; but only one. “We must have shaken off the other lion,” he thought.

The lion apparently did not think its prey worth a wetting; at any rate it made no attempt to take to the water in pursuit. The two horses, side by side, were now well out into the middle of the creek and the opposite shore could be clearly seen. The Tarkaan had not yet spoken a word. “But he will,” thought Shasta. “As soon as we have landed. What am I to say? I must begin thinking out a story.”

Then, suddenly, two voices spoke at his side.

“Oh, I am so tired,” said the one.

“Hold your tongue, Hwin, and don’t be a fool,” said the other.

“I’m dreaming,” thought Shasta. “I could have sworn that other horse spoke.”

Soon the horses were no longer swimming but walking and soon, with a great sound of water running off their sides and tails and with a great crunching of pebbles under eight hoofs, they came out on the farther beach of the inlet. The Tarkaan, to Shasta’s surprise, showed no wish to ask questions. He did not even look at Shasta but seemed anxious to urge his horse straight on. Bree, however, at once shouldered himself in the other horse’s way.

“Broo-hoo-hah!” he snorted. “Steady there! I heard you, I did. There’s no good pretending, Ma’am. I heard you. You’re a Talking Horse, a Narnian horse just like me.”

“What’s it got to do with you if she is?” said the strange rider fiercely, laying hand on sword-hilt. But the voice in which the words were spoken had already told Shasta something.

“Why, it’s only a girl!” he exclaimed.

“And what business is it of yours if I am only a girl?” snapped the stranger. “You’re only a boy: a rude, common little boy – a slave probably, who’s stolen his master’s horse.”

“That’s all you know,” said Shasta.

“He’s not a thief, little Tarkheena,” said Bree. “At least, if there’s been any stealing, you might just as well say I stole him. And as for its not being my business, you wouldn’t expect me to pass a lady of my own race in this strange country without speaking to her? It’s only natural I should.”